


now i hope it's forever

by bossymarmalade (maggie)



Category: Velvet Goldmine
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-08
Updated: 2014-12-08
Packaged: 2018-02-28 16:26:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2739140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maggie/pseuds/bossymarmalade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Here we are, still beginning after all these years.</p>
            </blockquote>





	now i hope it's forever

**Author's Note:**

> standard foreword: if anything I have written is problematic or oppressive to a marginalized group, please don't hesitate to let me know and I'll change it.
> 
>  
> 
> Contains one contextual use of a homophobic slur, tobacco use.

"I'd ask if you've got a fag to lend me," he smiles, "but I think we both know the answer to that one."

And that's how Curt Wild comes back into Mandy's life.

Oh, she's reluctant at first. She's tried to move on from then, that glorious beautiful magical time full of furs and music and delicate skin where you were allowed to put your fingertips. She's tried to skip right over the ugly parts, the coldness of Brian's shuttered stare and the laughs that squirrelled derisively behind her back. She'd done well until Arthur put his low mumbling questions into her mind and stirred everything back up.

And now here's Curt with long bleached hair and black eyeliner and an unsure, contemptuous laugh at the end of most of his sentences, making this nondescript bar feel like a kind of magic. Gritty between your teeth, maybe, but it's been a long time since Mandy's felt any sort of sparkle and shine at all. So she'll take it.

They'd slept together before, rolled up and romping with Brian in the middle urging them on with half-mad marijuana exhortations, but Curt doesn't try to get Mandy in bed this time and she's glad for it. Instead he says, "You look like you're doing well for yourself," which Mandy would take as an insult except for that warble in his voice, the way he's pinching the cigarette she gave him.

"Everything ends," she says. But that sounds too cynical when she says it out loud, so Mandy shakes her hair back from her face and drinks some of her rye and ginger, licking leafy sweetness around her mouth. Curt watches her tongue, wistfully, and she adds in a softer voice, "We were too young then. And everything was either moonlight or the end of the world. No in-between."

"It's fucking hard learning how to live in the in-between," Curt says, cutting himself off by putting the cigarette to his lips and taking a quick, harsh drag. "When you've had the end of the world." He smiles. "And moonlight."

He keeps looking down and then glancing up at her through the smoke trails, eyes haunted and begging, and although this isn't how Mandy wants to think of Curt (not after that first spattershot night, gleaming oil and skin and golden glitter sliced through with electric guitar and Curt's screaming voice), she finds she can't resist. She's always been drawn to men who need her, whatever that means, but at least this time she's got her eyes open.

"Come on," she says, and tugs the elbow of Curt's beaten leather jacket. He follows her outside without a question, and when he remembers under the greeny-gold light over the back door that he's supposed to be a rockin' rebel and opens his mouth with a sneer, Mandy takes hold of his face. Her fingers slide up into his pale hair (softer than she expected) and Curt quiets, expression sliding into puzzlement. He's maybe getting ready to be kissed, Mandy realizes, and wonders why it is that so many men want this from her at the beginning only to run scared from it at the end.

"We are travelers," she says, in a firm voice. "It all keeps on changing, and you can never tell who will slide in where, and who will fracture, because it's a kaleidoscope. But some people are connected through it anyway, Curt." Mandy closes her eyes for a moment. She can hear him breathing, rabbit-quick and raspy, and she keeps her eyes closed when she confesses, "I'm tired of traveling alone."

Mandy feels one of Curt's hands cover hers, intertwine their fingers, and he's pulling her hand away and holding their arms out over their heads, twirling her slowly before pulling her back into a tight hug. "I'm lost," he offers, counterpoint to her own confession. "Wandering without any sense of direction. I won't make a good navigator."

"Don't worry," Mandy says against his ear, her chin crinkling the leather on his shoulder. She leans back and waits until Curt meets her gaze, then slowly tips her head back to stare up at the night sky. "The stars know exactly where we are."

When he laughs she can feel it vibrate through her, tuning into a frequency that's been dead and silent for years. Waiting, and waiting, until it was finally time to come bright again with lights, and affection, and the flickering music of her screen dream.


End file.
